MPO 663 (Convective and Mesoscale Meteorology), Spring 2011

The aim of the course is to survey the wide scope of its title, with forays into a few selected depth areas for academic purposes (homework and testing), and to address student interests.

Student expectations:

1. Particpate by starting each class with a weather briefing or phenomenon show from the Web or literature. 20%
2. Prepare and present a "term paper" (a well-documented presentation file or Web page) on a topic of your choosing. 25%
3. Three homework sets, one from each Part of the course. All students do core work; each does one "extra," on Wiki. 30%
4. One exam, covering "testable questions" noted in each class session page, or in student-collaborated Wiki. 25%

Course materials:

We will use a main book (M&R), but in a scrambled order; plus supplemental materials described and linked in the class-by-class pages below.

Books:

*M&R = Markowski and Richardson, Mesoscale meteorology in Midlatitudes, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
Four other books are also on reserve in the RSMAS library:
* Mesoscale Dynamics, Lin, Y.-L., 2007 Cambridge press
* Storm and cloud dynamics : the dynamics of clouds and precipitating mesoscale systems
William R. Cotton, George H. Bryan, Susan C. van den Heever, Academic Press, 2011
* Atmospheric Convection. K. A. Emanuel, 1993 Oxford University Press.
* Cloud Dynamics. Houze, R. A., Jr., 1993 Academic Press.

Web: Course Wiki

Homeworks will be done by building up codes together on the course Wiki.
Testable questions (and their predecessors, lingering confusions) will also be developed there.

Math symbols for your Web pages: cut-paste cheat sheet (probably not Accessibility Compliant!)
(note: Wiki doesn't seem to take subscripts typed into its page editor so don't bother).